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In-Game Advertising Comes to Board Games
Grooves writes "Monopoly is getting rid of paper money in favor of credit cards. From the article: 'The new card, which resembles a debit card, is inserted into a small plastic reader/writer that can display and update the balance on the card. Traditional money is gone altogether, though purists can still purchase the original version.' Does this mean the end of complex Monopoly games where I charge grandma interest to borrow money?"
Now how will I cheat?
Did I say overlords? I meant protectors.
Damn, there goes my winning strategy: Embezzlement!
Its amazing how much easier Monopoly is to win when you steal a few $500s from the bank before the start of the game...
Unless I hack the reader... Hmmmm.
Test your net with Netalyzr
It's so much easier for the banker to 'accidentally' press the wrong key, than to stuff bright pink notes under something. And I'd be so pissed if the battery died halfway through the game.
damn, one of the best things of monopoly is about having big stacks of money in front of you.
Excuse me...do you take American Express?
"Personal ownership is a hallmark of conservative capitalism. And I don't believe I am entitled to anything that I did n
Sure a game with the name Monopoly would be above the influence of corporate interests like Visa!!
It's not stupid. It's advanced.
It's not just a board game any more. If there's a computer involved, it's a computer game.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
On the bright side, we won't have to deal with those stupid 5s and 1s, which only serve to get in the way.
On the other hand, this is going to make a lot of rulesets more complicated... ranging from embezzlement to the more common and legitimate Free Parking "put $500 and any taxes/fines in the middle, pick them up when you hit Free Parking" rule.
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Smart businessmen don't pay with credit cards since it makes everything costs more
What? People still play this horrible game? It's a nightmare form a game design perspective! The winner of the game is decided so early on in play, 80% of the time spent playing the game is virtually pointless because everyone can tell who is going to win (unless he/she makes an incredibly dumb trade or someone cheats).
At least if they're going to upgrade the game aesthetics, why not change the name to "Microsoft: The Game"?
*runs and hides*
The traditional Monopoly game helps teach kids how to understand folding money. Now it's just a video game where the kid can say "here's my card!" instead of having to learn count the bills. This is a sad day.
If you old fuddy-duddies can't wrap your head around these elecomotronics, Parker Brothers is still offering the cold hard cash version.
However, I hope that they keep the currency version around for a long time. To a kid, having large wads of paper in front of yourself to show off and rub the fact that you're winning in the other players' faces. If everyone has the same boring card, that just makes things even, now doesn't it?
Also, if they stop the cash edition, I won't be able to fulfill my dreams of filling a room with monopoly money and swimming around in it ala Scrooge McDuck.
It is a neat idea that puts a spin on monopoly other then themed boards. Notice how it costs more. The company is trying to come up with ways for you to buy the same game you already own. And it will probably work. When you go to buy a board game odds are that you will buy a game you have already played. That is why we have the same dozen games, but with 50 themes (trivial pursuit star wars!). The sad thing is that Monopoly was a great way for kids to learn about money.
Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
What's next, identity theft?
Have you read my blog lately?
Take a ride on the Reading: $25
A house on Atlantic Avenue: $150
The look on your brother's face when he lands on Park Place with four houses: priceless.
And it's educational, too! Who doesn't charge their rent on a credit card? It's good, sound personal fiscal policy, the kind of lesson that I want my children to learn!
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
At least it not paypal -- you could be winning the game and have your funds frozen for suspect activity.
No, but every time you land on a space owned by another player, they'll run a credit check on you before you are allowed to stay there.
Will the bank will also keep 2.5% per transaction like in the real world?
Crack the card reader!!! Simply program it to send the fractional pennies left over from every transaction into a seperate account linked to yours. No one will every notice their money is gone!
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
The best cheat is to charge someone rent on a property that person owns. Even if it's only a $7 payoff, it rocks way more than palming $500 from the bank. The really hard part is not laughing before the next dice roll.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
One nice thing about Monopoly is that children learn things like how to count money. With the credit card version it will be easier (and less time consuming) to play a game, but will there be the same educational value? Probably not.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
WTF?!?!
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Playing this version can adversely affect your FICO score and the interest rate you may have to pay for a loan or mortgage.
question : "Does this mean the end of complex Monopoly games where I charge grandma interest to borrow money?"
answer : "purists can still purchase the original version."
Download my free songs!
I grew up playing Monopoly, but I've come to realize that Monopoly is a terrible board game. It is sad that it is still played so widely when there are so many great boards games to come out just recently. Monopoly changing the names and adding an electronic gimmick won't save itself from poor mechanics.
At bare minimum families should be playing Settlers of Catan these days. *Maybe* Carcassonne. Puerto Rico and Reiner Knizia games for families that claim to know something about board games.
A good site for other games, review, and community check out Board Game Geek
The way we played, there were no rules outside the banker. Pickpocketing, bribes, free trade, all tricks allowed. Shuffle that house two fields away onto your area and claim it's yours, or put the dice down, 6-up and claim you just threw them. Bring your own monopoly money from home. Nobody got desperate enough to trade the in-game cash for real money, but that would be perfectly legal too.
The "dirty" version of the game was fun. Electronics will most likely kill this kind of gameplay.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
They make a paper money version? I wish someone had told me sooner.
I've been playing the "Monopoly: Yap Edition" from Micronesia. Keeping track of and moving hundreds of giant stone discs is not as fun as it sounds. Passing Go! is usually seen as physical punishment, not a reward. Toes get stubbed. Basically, after about 15 minutes, everyone gets too exhausted to keep going.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
I must have purchased 4 copies of the game. Its hard to keep track of the bills. Maybe thats why I like the Video game that was made for SuperNES. But , this sounds like a good compromise betweenthe two. Or maybe now that I'm not living with a 3 year old that ate monopoly money and figurines, I won't lose them. Still as other posters have mentioned, I'd love to buy it and crack the card reader. That would be sweet, sweet revenge against... well, no one actually I usually win without cheating, but I'd would be even sweeter if I cheated like that.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Is it usefull for cards that doesn't come with the game? Anyone know?
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
As if advertising in almost every other aspect of our lives wasn't bad enough. We now have to subject kids to it during "family time" and give 7 year olds virtual credit cards. What better way to teach kids responsible spending habits than by giving them cards that magically replenish their currency value without any effort on your part?
This takes a very interesting aspect of monopoly out of the game! I loved counting and feeling the bank notes. This sort of loses personal touch with the user. And you can't teach little kids what money is and how to use it with the card. THIS SUCKS!
-Palal
At last, people can play Monopoly without tedious things like addition!
Well, until they run out of fresh batteries, anyway.
The fun really starts when you're playing according to the original Federal Reserve Monopoly
:-)
rules. Instead of giving people "salaries" when they pass 'GO', in FRM people get a loan or not
depending on whether the banking cartel is trying to slow the economy forcing people into
default so it can get its hands on the streets you thought you owned. Oh and right after 911 we
added a rule where everybody gets to call a "National Security Incident" whenever they roll three six in a row and they can
finger someone who gets half of his estate claimed by the bank, bank gets to pick what streets.
Annuit Coeptis
Almost everyone plays Monopoly with unofficial rules, like putting fines underneath one of the card stacks, and giving the stash to whoever draws the last card. Of course, these changes make the game more about luck and less about strategy. But who plays Monopoly, anyway? Not strategy geeks, or at least not mostly. It's small kids and other people looking for harmless fun that doesn't require a lot of brain power.
It's actually the purists who will like the new debit cards, because they'll be able to play a strict game without the hassle of counting all those stupid pieces of paper. But the non-purists — and that's probably 90% of the people who buy Monopoly sets — will totally reject this. Not because it's high tech, but because it leaves less room for invention.
I think it's great that credit companies are offering this great opportunity for my kids to learn how great credit is and the advantages of being in debt. It's like free money and you don't even have to count it. I know I got my kids their first card when they were 10 and they really appreciated it. I always make sure they are Visa also.
My brother's goal in Monopoly was a bit different than most: His goal was to get all the $1 bills and own Boardwalk. He would usually lose quickly, but as long as he fulfilled those goals, everything else was fine.
Why must you mess with strange unusual goals? Whyyyyyy!!!
IF they are going to update they economics of the game, they should go all out..... You can buy Park Place with a 7 turn interest only ARM, inflate the profits using mark-to-market accounting and dump all the loses to a dummy corp setup under the Thimble. Genius!
I can't imagine that this game will be popular, even with a computer-literate set. For one thing, ideas like this credit-based Monopoly ignore the very real fact that a symbol is not the same as the thing symbolized, either conceptually or in emotional terms.
Now, I'm a woman, so my perspective may not be shared by the estrogen-challenged among us, but for me part of the satisfaction of board games (as well as of many other hobbies) is the opportunity to interact with and manipulate real objects-- to see a stack of money grow, move around a little iron doggie, build wooden roads in Settlers, construct fields of color in Blockus, etc. It's not especially smart, I know, but it is a very visceral and very real component of my enjoyment of the game. For children, exploration of the objects involved may constitute most or all of the pleasure they take in gameplay, and rightly so, since that kind of play is needed to build spatial relations and motor skills.
Even for adults, though, I can't help feeling as though interactions with concrete physical objects are necessary to keep in touch with our environment and maintain a sense of control and comfort in our world. We evolved from monkeys, after all-- manipulating objects is what we do best. Abstract thinking is useful and necessary, too, of course, but I can't help feeling as though the ongoing virtualization of everyday life is going to result in increased stress and poor decision-making for our recently-ex-hunter/gatherer selves.
That said, I do hope the social scientists mount some comparative studies of virtual-Monopoly vs. real-Monopoly gameplay. What a great opportunity to examine the psychology of credit!
I remember playing Monopoly with my siblings. At one point, we got tired to handing the paper money back and forth, so we each grabbed a cheap calculator, and used the "memory" feature to store our balances. It worked like a charm (or, rather, it worked very much unlike a charm, since charms have a tendency to do absolutely nothing but make the wearer look gullible)!
http://outcampaign.org/
Instead of real dice, just press a button to generate random number 'throw'?
Cheating reserved for hardware hackers only - sorry g'ma...
I wonder how easy it is to hack the Monopoly reader to do skimming etc?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Somebody will figure out a way to hack the reader to hook up to a PC, then we'll have a generation of kids who grow up being able to hexedit their parent's credit cards. That's WAY better than a set of MindStorms!
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
from other people we've stolen the identity of.
Well, you wanted realism, right?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I read somewhere that the credit card industry calls people who pay their balance in full every month "deadbeats".
My irony-meter went off the red end of the scale.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
The thing that keeps a Monopoly game mildly interesting is all of the under-the-table and back-room (or bathroom) wheeling and dealing going on. It makes it more about the people, and the players' interactions.
Take that away, and you get mind-numbing tedium. Wasn't that what computers and microeletronics were supposed to save us from?
Now I think you're being a little ridiculous.
The credit card industry makes its money off of people who run balances, and consequently pay them interest. (To a much lesser extent they make money off of merchant fees, but that's a different issue.) It is quite possible, if you are responsible, to use a credit card and never pay the card-company a cent. If you play the cashback games, you can even come out slightly ahead.
If you do not run a balance, and pay your bill at the end of the month (effectively using your "credit" card as a charge card -- or better yet, by just having a charge card), then credit cards are merely a convenient form of payment, complete with a nice itemized receipt at the end of the month.
I use them in lieu of cash because I don't like carrying around change. I don't like going to an ATM to get cash, and I like carrying around loads of small bills and coins even less. Plastic's more convenient, and it provides a nice way to keep track of what I spent my money on (by dumping the data into Quicken at the end of the month, I can tell you where every penny of my outflows went over the past several years; unless you have an absolutely stunning memory or collect register receipts obsessively, you can't do that with cash).
If you are spending more money than you are taking in, then you have a problem -- period. This is regardless of whether you are using a credit card, or writing checks to take advantage of the "float," or borrowing from your uncle. Sometimes it can be advantageous to borrow money (buying a house/car, etc.), but it should be carefully done, and credit cards are rarely the way to do it.
A lot of people, myself included, don't like debit cards. I refuse to use them; I like the idea of having the credit company's money on the line if they fuck up, instead of mine; not to mention what might happen if I lose the card -- debit cards almost always have shorter reporting deadlines. (Personally, I prefer charge cards with a defined limit to either credit cards or debit cards, and they're what I use almost exclusively.)
The only reason not to have a credit card is if you think you can't deal with the temptation caused by having the ability to spend beyond your means. However, in my opinion that's not a problem due to the credit card, it's a problem due to you.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
My sister and I grew up playing a Monopoly set from the 1960s that was my mom's when she was a kid. (It wasn't a "vintage" thing, we were just shit-poor and couldn't afford new games.) Eventually over the years the board and some of the cash wore out, but by then we were able to buy a new set and throw in the pieces of the old set that were in good condition. Even now, my circa-1997 Monopoly set has a decent amount of 50-year-old wooden houses mixed in with the plastic ones, and enough cash in the stacks for a truly massive game.
Basing the game around a gadget changes all that, though. It takes away the timeless quality of a good board game. How long will the cruddy plastic cards and reader of the sort they'd throw in a modern board game last? However robust they make the things, I highly doubt any kids I may have would be enjoying it as much in 30 years as I do now.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
This new invention could be useful for the Game of Life (TM). It's easier for the banker to issue money to a doctor that earns $50k (1 $50k note) each payday instead of the journalist earning $24,000 (1 20k note and 4 1k note). No one in my circle of friends ever want to be a banker. It's usually picked by random.
For the spinner, it would speed games quickly if we didn't have to wait for the spinner to stop. It could take 5-20 seconds depending on the strength of the person and/or the amount of cooking oil underneath.
Every geek has some sort of website, programming or computer project. Here's mine: www.youtasteit.com . What's yours?
Well actually, this might be the ideal way to teach kids about money.
As far as they'll probably be concerned during their lifetimes, money will be nothing but an abstract concept -- represented by the digits of a bank balance on an ATM screen or computer monitor. To a lesser extent, it's the numbers you write on a check or see in a bankbook, but both of those things will probably go the way of the dodo during your kids' tenures on this planet.
Very little money these days actually passes through someone's hands during a transaction. It probably makes sense to teach kids about money with simulated electronic instruments, because that's how they're going to deal with it. The more comfortable they get with the idea that those numbers on the screen have real value, and are eqivalent to actual stuff, here in the physical world, the more successful they'll probably be.
Likewise, you're probably better getting your kid a passbook savings account with no minimum balance than a piggy bank: the idea of making regular deposits and watching the balance grow due to interest will probably be a better learning experience than collecting coins in a jar would be.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Monopoly is the worst game ever. I have never finished a game without throwing the board across the room.
and your data is sold to other games so you get a bunch of crappy offers in the mail from Stratego?
What about the rule where the most tan person gets his assets frozen by the bank and moved directly to Jail at some random point, chosen by the player with the most money after the third round?
For some reason nobody ever wants to play with me anymore...
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
the secrets of commerce laid bare
I don't want gagets around me every single moment. I surf the net, play video games, watch TV, all electronic activities that I enjoy. But somtimes I want non-electronic enjoyment, and board games are one excellent alternative.
There are already electronic versions of monopoly the people play, it seems to me like the people who still fork out money for the board probably are after a differet experience - I know I am. But as long as there are paper versions out thre, I guess I can't complain.
I would hope that at some point the government would want to directly control the currency again.
Some would ask how is it a monopoly, when you can choose between coke and pepsi. But the point is that there is a private credit tax of 2-5% on many purchaces.
Train the children to get used to using credit cards instead of cash, and when they grow up they will look down upon cash .. what a brilliant idea...
Whats next, RIAA games where you go and bust 'pirates'? or the 'joys of big brother' as you play HSD agent looking for terrorists in your own home?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Of all my expenses, rent (or now, mortgage) is something I wish could have been billed to my card.
Explanation: Credit cards are just as safe as cash so long as you pay them off at the due-date, and in my case I get points which I can use to travel. If my rent/mortgage (one of the biggest recurring expenses) was on there I'd probably be sitting somewhere sunny right now. And for those that have the 1-2% cards (1% of your yearly expenses back as cash) you could be getting $200-500 bucks back a year.
One of the charms of the original Monopoly was that it taught my kids a bit about counting and such, in the use of the money. Also, part of the charm was scrounging up your dollars to pay bills, or receiving a huge stack of bills. One beep and a balance added to your card just blows that whole tactile experience.
What's next, electronic scrabble boards that find words for you? I think it's a stupid idea, all around.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
wire the board, and each property can display advertising...
imagine park place with AmEx and Rolex ads,
cheaper properties with flashing MD20-20 and sneaker logos,
railroads with background colors that match current Homeland Security
threat levels,
and a jail that switches colors depending upon which gang is running
the place.
I would suspect that they would, instead of having a reader / writer magtek swip which would cost 200-400 a piece the device reads the card for the persons uid and keeps track of all their information on the device its self.
Really it's silly to think that its a reader/writer the device and the cards them selves would be worn out pretty quickly when you think of how often the thing would need to write to each card in a single game, let alone a device that would only cost them 1-2 dollars.
TruePunk | Games
While not official, the rule is optional in the PC version, and probably other electronic versions. Unfortunately, IIRC, the best version, the N64 version, did not have that rule available.
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
What will I use to pay SCO with now?
credit cards~ cost the merchant money.
I am a credit card merchant. if someone pays me cash, I get 100% of the funds
if someone pays me via cc, I get from 96-98% of the funds
if I wind up doing a return, I lose 100% of the return.
for some transactions, credit cards are NOT appropriate.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I smell another Monopoly Playmaster.
You never expect irony, do you?
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@iyfwrestling
Play Monopoly according to the rules bundled with the game. It turns out it does not take
such an enormous amount of time when you do that.
I like to play as a disinterested banker. I don't have a piece on the board, don't move, don't own real estate.
I play as banker and auctioneer and referee. That also helps move the game along nicely.
The only problem I've ever had, is finding players who do not insist on the ridiculous idea of putting all tax money in the center of the board and paying it out for "Free Parking." (This is one huge reason Monopoly games can go on for ten hours.)
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
did any of you read the article? "No word on when the debit card version will reach US shores." It's talking about the London version, and certain versions available in France and Germany, not every version ever made, nor the original. Just... wow.
Right now, Hasbro is still offering PDF version of Monopoly money. Here's the URL: http://www.hasbro.com/monopoly/pl/page.treasureche st/dn/default.cfm
Might want to get these soon as I can see them removing the files. I guess in the future you won't be able to play Monopoly unless you have an RFID chip embedded into your naughty bits..
I can't get a credit card, you insensitive clod!
Are barcode tattoos part of the game too?
There you have it folks. There's no better way to condition people to the concept that electronics (no matter how insecure) is a better alternative to cash. Doing it with a game is insidious.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
I've been playing with book-entry accounting with credit allowed since I was a kid.
We'd play until we got tired.
With all the money we put in "free parking" the tide of the game could and usually did change radically several times.
The summary is mistaken. TFA is quite clear that this is for a British version of the game and that it is merely one of the 10,000 variations of Monopoly. I mean- we have Star Wars Monopoly, 'Cleveland in a Box' Monopoly, and my personal favorite Ghettopoly (which you can;t get in the U.S. now, google it sometime for the Department of Justice freaking out over it). This is simply Visa Monopoly. Nothing to see here- move along.
2. come on people! Get with the program - when you run out of money - do what I do:
PRINT YOUR OWN.
It's not hard. coloured paper is cheap - for a few dollars you can print up MILLIONS of Monopoly dollars - and use a groovier design, no less.
I remember when I was a kid we would play Monopoly for DAYS - one game. Eventually the bank would run out of money, and we'd start printing more using paper and rubber stamps. We'd print up $1000 bills $5000 bills. since there isn't any real compounding interest taking money out of the game, the game tends to run out of money, creating inflation.
So, crank up your injet and print your own monopoly money.
Since they stopped publishing the M3 pretty soon your monopoly money might be as valuable as a real dollar - maybe even more...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I see an awful lot of posts claiming that this shift removes the educational value from the game. Others say that there never was any educational value, beyond addition and subtraction. What I do NOT see is anyone stating what seemed quite obvious to me really, and that is that the physicality of the money is not the primary issue in the game, so far as educational purposes go. The prime educational benefit is recognizing the consequences of poor money management. If you make bad decisions, you are out of the game. That aspect has not changed. I think the fact that children will grow up seeing that there are negative consequences of using a card (credit or otherwise) to bankrupt themselves will, in fact, be beneficial to overall spending habits. We can't expect kids to handle credit cards responsibly if we never give them a safe opportunity to learn by using them poorly. And now you can play the game outside on a windy day, or in a car (with a magnetic board). For every crank who is complaining about seeing his or her childhood memories get crushed under the jackboot of change...deal with it, ya damn pansies.
No piles of money in front of each player = no emotion.
No sig today...
Bravo Slashdot submiter & editor... Bravo.
Let's see first of all RTFA. It is ONE edition of monopoly. Not all future editions.
Secondly, the title of the slashdot post. "Advertising comes to Board Games."
Really? Ok, hrmm lets read the summary.. Odd No mention of this advertising...
Yes, I know Visa worked with Parker Brothers to make a credit card swiper for ONE edition of monopoly (only in UK and parts of europe so far). And they have the Visa logo on it... Of course, I know that not from this summary.. I guess it was good that I RTFA before slashdot posted it, so I knew what this post was about before I read the summary that misses the point.
DJMD - The fourth man - Planetary
This is really going to fuck up Underwater Monopoly.
Indy Media Watch-Proctologist of the Internet
rated 4 funny? It must be the "it's funny because it's true" funny.
Shouldn't it be something like "Debit cards to replace money in Monopoly"? Just because the card is Visa doesn't make it anywhere near the first time brand names have been used in board games. The Barbie board game came out in the 1960s, for example. Ditto for all the games about movies, TV shows, and licensed properties.
...buy the game?
/Mad
A clever bit of marketing to increase sales. There is nothing wrong with the old version of Monopoly with 'real' money.
Same with the World Cup Edition, I can imagine the fights in the lounge as nobody wants to be the England team. 'Do not go past go, do not collect £200, do not win'.
I think we will stick to our original version bought from a charity shop with real money.
If you land on Boardwalk (populated with houses or hotels), all you have to do is call Visa's Monopoly division and say "My Monopoly card was stolen! That recent Boardwalk transaction is fraudulent - it obviously doesn't match my previous purchasing patterns. Please put the money back into my account".
"On the bright side, we won't have to deal with those stupid 5s and 1s, which only serve to get in the way."
That's the problem with inflation. Goddamnit! They should've ditch the whole fiat money system and returned to the Gold Standard!!
__
Thou hast besquirted me, O leotarded one.
I remember back in college at Florida when I used to get together with friends for a semi-regular Monopoly game, and the Civil Engineer in the group recommended we give calculators a try to track the money. While skeptical at first, I ended up being rather amazed at how much faster the game played, and from there we never looked back.
I'll be eager to see how this pans out, but from the graphics it looks like this is a European edition. Who knows if it will ever see light of day in the US...
Credit card surcharges are very common, particularly when booking air travel.
How many people actually pay cash nowadays? When I hit the bank machine or a teller that has 'cash back' I usually grab an extra $20, but in most cases the majority of my expenditures are either credit or debit. From my understanding, debit also costs the merchant, which is why some will charge an extra fee (25c, etc) on the debit machine when it is used to cover costs. Of course, with Visa, this is not allowed (the merchant cannot pass along an extra charge for using Visa). If you're running a shop that has pretty thin margins then sometime Visa might just not be a good choice.
What surprises me is how many merchants do not seem to know the rules that come along with accepting Visa, some of the commonly broken ones including:
a) No passing the buck to the consumer (aka no charging an extra 3% for credit-card purchases, or offering 3% discount for cash which is actually the same when you inflate the margins 3%)
b) No minimum purchase (and I believe no max except what the card will handle). Commonly broken as many merchants don't realize the difference between Visa/Debit. Also subject to major annoyances such as some dude paying credit for a $0.30 package of gum
c) The card is acceptable for all items (from my understanding) showing the Visa logo means you must accept Visa, and you can't pick and choose the ones that give more profit. I've had issues with this one a lot, such as being told I cannot pay for lottery tickets or other low-margin items with Visa even in combination with other items. One exception is a 'split' business such as a car dealership, where one part (such as the garage) accepts Visa but the other (the dealership) doesn't. Although the dealership might run some charges such as downpayment, etc through the garage Visa for convenience, they generally won't and aren't required to accept it for the larger purchase in the dealership itself (sneaky). Quite dissappointing for me as I really wanted the points on my last vehicle purchase, but I can understand how a 2-3%+ surcharge would such on a large purchase like that.
d) Signatures aren't always required. In fact I believe you can skip the signature, but if you get a chargeback for a non-signed bill you're screwed.
e) Chargebacks can happen, and they can suck for merchants as the client tends to be preferred. Not quite so much a problem for a 7-11 unless you've got a stolen card being used, but rather uncool when you just sold a $1000 item to some guy on ebay. On the other hand direct Visa can sometimes be a little nicer than paypal (oh, the horror stories), and generally easier/faster to accept than debit or other methods
.
To the parent: The above comments aren't really aimed at you, but the do help show why Visa acceptance/rules can sometimes be unpleasant for the retailer and/or generally not correctly followed or understood by either party. Please feel free to add/correct 'em
Me and the old ball-and-chain spotted this one in Woolworths about 3 weeks ago and bought it on the spot.
Without paper money the game feels a lot faster. Also the houses are apartments that can be stacked up, so unlike the old houses they *actually fit* on your properties.
She has commented that the card makes it more tempting to spend money, but thats probably just a biological reaction to small plastic cards.
One downside - its much harder to play the old house rule off all money paid to the bank going into the middle, and then being won by whoever lands on free parking.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Is this serious? It sounds like a bizarrely complicated way to do a simple board game.
Maybe it's so that NSA can look for suspicious Monopoly activity.
Revive the Constitution.
Why play the physical game at all? Why not play a (free) computer version of it? The whole point of a board game is the tactile experience; computer games are obviously much better at ever other aspect of it. In conclusion, fuck off Parker Bros.
games are meant to be enjoyed by children of all ages, where's the government to legislate against this kind of perversion ... for god's sake won't someone think of the children?
I can't wait for the new version that comes with a page of stickers instead of credit cards. Just put the mark on your right hand -- or even your forehead, if you want to be wacky! -- and show it to the scanner when you want to buy or sell. Fun for ages 6 - 66!
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The real Tetsujin 28 is a giant robot.